As somebody, who uses both Gentoo and FreeBSD, there were two major failings of FreeBSD (at least in its current state) on my desktop:
1) Using the nVidia drm kernel module and XFree driver instantly crashes my computer.
2) My BT848 TV card doesn't actually work right.
Something that Gentoo has over FreeBSD (and not just with regard to my system) are use flags. With FreeBSD ports, adding support for certain libraries often requires passing flags to make, which you typically don't know until you trying to build a package and it spits some message out about them. In Gentoo, you can select the flags you want and everything automatically uses them. I have to admit that getting all my programs support for all the libraries I want is something I really enjoy about Gentoo.
But overall, I do like FreeBSD and would probably run it more if I could use XFree with OpenGL acceleration and watch TV. I do run it on my laptop, because all of the hardware there does work with it. Notable is also that the documentation is outstanding compared to most anything on Linux.
The bottom line (for me at least) is that Linux tends to be more bleeding edge and has broader hardware support, probably due to a larger user and developer community.
This is not completely true. Some schools DO give (at least most) MS students funding. I know it was that way at Berkeley at least, although I've heard it's really the exception in this case.
I've heard similar sorts of advice before and I've always wondered, what are you supposed to say you did for those years on the resume (especially if there's nothing between when you finished and now)?
SIGGRAPH is supposed to be all about graphics (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics or something like that).
Ya, it's mostly about graphics, but technically they bill it as "The World's Largest Marketplace of Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques" (quoted from the conference webpage). So, I'm guessing this fits under "interactive techniques".
I also found this
brief overview on the conference website for those that are interested.
Hrmmm. I hope the schools maintain their privacy (for privacy's sake not to protect piracy), but I fear that the RIAA will start to pressure the donors of these schools (where many $$'s for research and support come from).
I'm curious though... What kind of donor pressure is the RIAA going to make? I would wager that not a whole lot of money comes from RIAA members (or even the large media companies that tend to own them) for scholarships/research/etc. As for other unrelated corporations, what interest would they have to withhold such money? Alumni donors would most likely support their alma mater over a bullying RIAA I would guess too.
Instead of 1% of the world population, now the wealth generated by IT can be shared with 20-30%. Isn't it just fair?
First, 1% is not really an accurate figure. It's actually a lot more than that... US+WEurope+Japan+Australia+NZ+Canada is around 700 million people (I estimate off the top of my head). Divided by 6 billion in the world is a bit more than 10% in the most developed nations.
Second of all, the transfer of wealth isn't so much a national one as that the rich in India (and really the rich in the industrialized world) are getting richer, while everybody else stays the same or gets poorer. India has something like 1 billion people. Only a small fraction of them (on the order of a couple million people max) are involved in the IT field. There is definitely a rich upper class (not programmers) and a middle class (this is more where the programmer types fit in). The rest of India is really quite poor.
Some of the technology colleges in India make Harvard's acceptance criteria look like childsplay... my personal feeling on the subject: this will lead to lovely increases in efficiency, but no such boosts in creativity in the field...
I wouldn't say these are so comparable. I know several guys who have a BTech (the big degree granted there for this sort of stuff) from an IIT (and other schools too). The way they told me it works is that everybody basically takes a big admissions test at some point. The results of this test grant you a place to study a certain subject at a certain IIT campus. The computer-oriented fields are the most competetive, especially at the most prestigious IIT campuses. For example, you might get the option to study CS in Guwahati or mechanical engineering in Bombay or maybe just the option to study one subject at one campus (if you don't do so well). But basically it's all about this test (maybe your grades partially too, I dunno exactly). Additionally, in India there is a lot of prestige attached to the computer field, because the salaries are quite good by Indian standards. This adds to the competetiveness in the IT field.
In a place like Harvard, good grades and test scores are not enough. They're not just looking for the best test takers. They have a more subjective ("holistic") process.
Ok software companies already have a problem with good work code here in North America.
If we go by the logic that clothing made in overseas sweat shops is cheap and crappy how will software produced over there be.
Yes, but there's a huge market for cheap, crappy clothing that just is good enough for many people. At the same time, there are still Italian companies doing well making high-end clothing.
A similar stratification seems to be happening with IT here. Relatively straight forward (code this database that connects to this app) sort of stuff is mostly what is being sent to India. At least for now, innovative sorts of things are not going to India en masse: small novel startups and much of the R&D contracts (including defense) for example.
Yes, but there's an important difference with these types of jobs:
It's probably about the same cost to build a car in these countries as the US, but it costs a lot to actually ship automobiles by sea. American cars sold in Europe are generally made in Europe as well.
To ship your software product just takes a file transfer or at the most a CD via FedEx.
American (and Dutch, which is what I am:p) frankness is perceived as incredibly rude by approximately 95% of the world's inhabitants (including the Brits;-). The same goes for a lack of devout, unquestioning respect of seniority (hello Germany;-).
Americans have nothing on the Germans with regard to frankness! Not really sure about the Dutch though. You all more just have a collective odd sense of humor I think (:
I still remember when my Germans friends bluntly telling me immediately, how my haircut was screwed up. That would really never happen in the US. People would just lie to you and say it looks fine. The truth is a bit refreshing though. You can definitely feel the hierarchy everywhere in Germany. It's kinda freaky really.
The weirdest part about Indian culture IMHO though is that the head movements for affirmative and negative are sorta opposite. It's hard to describe just with text, but yes is a sort of diagonal head shake. I guess that's one of those things you don't really have to deal with in outsourcing though.
Ya, they don't change that often, but the problem is that some (even in the US) don't change (like Arizona or places nearer to the equator) ever. Others change at different times of the year (daylight savings time begins in most Western European countries a week before it does in North America) or in different directions (ie, southern hemisphere summer is northern hemisphere winter). These things would just make it a pain.
It seems like you could run some cron job every half-hour (for those funky 1/2 zones in central Asia), which computes the actual time using 'date' (which seems to be able to deal with all these weird special cases for each timezone).
Actually I studied Dutch for 2 years, so I know exactly what you're talking about. I remember on several occassions trying to use a "Dutch" word and the instructor (native speaker) saying to just use the English one, because nobody really talked like that. I can't remember specific instances of this now (it was too long ago, but maybe the word 'meeting'?), but these were really very everyday words with perfectly good Dutch equivalents.
The particularly odd part about this is that during the Enlightenment in German speaking areas, there was a huge push to purge Latin technical terms from the vocabulary. At that time apparently, Dutch had Germanic many technical words of Germanic origin and a lot of the words were simply brought into German (presumably by making simple translations of the word parts).
At the same time though my impression is that the Dutch in general don't really care that their language is englishifying or that English is becoming more common place in every day life. For example, in Germany (and I'm told France as well), if you speak to somebody in German (even if it's fairly bad), they will respond to you in German. Typically, they will not switch to English, unless you start talking in English (and even then, the chance they speak English is really not 100%). However, in the Netherlands, people immediately pick up on the accent and will all but refuse to speak to you in Dutch if they speak English (which many people, especially in bigger cities, do quite well). Ironically though, I never have really had this problem in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium for readers who may not know). There I think they've fought so long against the political dominance of French that they really value their language. Wouldn't that be ironic, if someday Dutch was only spoken Flanders!
Here's how germans translat "e-mail": "elektronische post"...
Did you know the german word for "Admin"? It's "Netzwerkadministrator"...a word with fsckin' 21 chars:-/
Speaking as an American living in Germany, sometimes it amazes me how arbitrary the decision of using borrowed or translated computer terminology is. My favorite as of late is "worst-case Laufzeit" (worst case runtime). Worst-case is something which can be applied to many other fields, but run time is generally confined (at least as far as I know) to the time it takes for a computer to do something. Yet, they translate the individual parts of the English compound to form a new German compound, while leaving the more broadly used word in the original English.
This reminds me of what happened with my parents. Probably about a little over a year ago, they were having major computer problems (Windows ME I think).
Although I think they had always used Netscape, apparently, my brother had tried to install the latest version of IE on the computer. During the install, a blue screen came up or something and the system crashed. Afterwards, the OS was basically toasted and would only start up in safe mode.
Anyhow, the next time I was in town, I wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows. However, I also installed Mozilla and told them to just use that in the future and said it's really just a different kind of Netscape.
Well, I was home again over Christmas and they were ranting and raving about how great Mozilla is. Apparently, they had had conversations with neighbors and friends about this "Mozilla thing" and how it crashes less, blocks pop-ups easily, etc. Of course, none of these people had heard of it, but their interest was immediately sparked. Maybe they're Mozilla users now even...
The point is that Mozilla is a piece of free software that even my not-so-tech-savy parents can evagelize about, because it's a good product for a wide range of people.
The organizers report an enormous increase in attendance at this year's LinuxTag. Two hours before the end of the convention they drew a preliminary conclusion for LinuxTag 2003: over 19,500 visitors were counted, more than 40% more than last year.
The many international guests, for example John 'Maddog' Hall from the USA and Utaka Niibe of the Free Software Initiative Japan, ensured full presentation rooms. Also content-wise the presentations were predominantely high class.
The exhibitors expressed themselves throughout positively surprised and satisfied. There were "extremely many business contacts" registered. Many exhibitors saw their expectations fullfilled. Whoever had seen LinuxTag still as a community event with relatively few business customers, saw themselves better informed.
Oliver Zendel, the head of LinuxTag e.V., sees LinuxTag as a large success that proves that Linux and free software can also suceed in the field of professional business. LinuxTag is the largest Linux convention in Europe and according to his words, a "world-wide leading convention for free software."
Highly visible was the effect, that arose from the decision by the city of Munich to use Linux. According to information from Pro-Linux the number of accredited journalists doubled from that of last year.
My impression on at least one of the reasons why they do this, is that there is certain proprietary code licensed from other companies in these drivers, which they simply do not have permission to release with an open license. I suppose the primary manufacturer (ie, nvidia, ati, or 3d labs) could work to get the people who do own the proprietary licenses on that code to open it. However, this seems like a lot of work from a video card chip manufacturer's perspective, for (debateably) little gain. I've also heard grumblings (maybe just rumors though) that companies are afraid to release their drivers open source, because then competitors can see how their architecture is set up.
The article seems to be slashdotted already from my end, so I haven't read the article, but... how is this any different from more traditional balloting techniques? The machines they use to count paper ballots spit out a total at the end too, which election officals then add to other counts from other precincts. Even with hand counting, a similar thing would happen: a room of people produce a result for a given voting area.
So long as the data from the electronic machines is still available for a recount and no easier to tamper with than paper, I fail to see how this is really any more of a problem.
I really wonder though if simplification would make any difference at all. Many of theterms asked in this quiz represent unique concepts. How would you even simplify megahertz or MP3 or Bluetooth? These are inherently technical concepts, which really need inherently technical words.
Educating people is really the only reasonable solution, but even that isn't so easy. Just take megahertz for example. Well, yes, it's defined to be the number of ticks that clock in the computer makes per second. However, you now have to explain what all this business about a clock is, which will certainly lead to other questions. For most people, this is really just too much. Of course, even if people know the definition of a MHz, they'll still likely to think of it as "how fast your computer runs" in practical terms, which is still problematic.
This is but one more great example of how monopolies can be good for markets; Put enough pressure on a resource, and people will find alternatives.
I'm not sure how this monopoly situation is really good for the market in general. If there wasn't all of this gov't monopoly pressure, maybe the money being invested in lower-quality VoIP would be invested in building a half-way decent phone system. The way things are now, only people with access to high speed internet (via radio or satelite or whatever) seem to be benefiting. If Ghana's or Togo's phone system was on par with western standards, more people would have access to decent phone service.
To use a bad analogy, it's like the pass is blocked off by the government, so now people are climbing over or digging tunnels through the mountains instead, since they're not allowed through the pass. If the gov't would just let people through the pass, things would be more efficient. Mountain climbing and tunnel digging might be very useful, but if you're just trying to get to the other side, it's a lot of extra work.
The reason VoIP hasn't really caught on in the industrialized world is because telephone networks do a better job (at least for now) of providing voice service with regard to sound quality, features, and reliability. In Africa, this seems to be the only way to get any sort of basic service at all, so people are willing to go with it.
So how long until we start outsourcing jobs there?
From what they talk about in the article, it already seems there's a call center there, which is being used to sell services in the northeastern US. Despite the claims of the article though, places like Ghana (which is really one of the better off places in Africa) still lack the resources that places like India have. Programming jobs are outsourced to India because 1) there is an education system there that produces a work force capable of doing that kind of work and 2) companies aren't afraid to invest or do business there due to political instability. Both of these are really important to get foreign investment. Take Pakistan for example. Problems with 2) have really limited opportunities there, even though it does have some of 1).
I know no west african nation has this sort of infrastructure in place at this time. However, in the future, I suppose it could happen in places with stable governments and the necessary investments.
Too many science courses, including comp-sci, are excessively theory-oriented. Innovation is the lifeblood of science, not the ability to recite a text-book.
Ya, but where do you think those theories came from? They didn't just drop out of the sky; they were innovated. On the other side of the coin, do you think theory played no role in this innovation contest? Sure, theory isn't everything, but it's also a necessary part of innovation.
Uh, there's no such thing (at least as far as I know) as the "University of Berkley", only the University of California at Berkeley... you insensitive clod!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but how are these crippled CDs exactly illegal? Personally, I don't like the record companies doing this, but they have a right to sell their crippled products if they want to. What we should all really be pushing for first here, is to require some sort of labeling though. This alone will probably be enough to sink sales of those releases, which is why the record companies aren't willing to do it on their own.
It's the whole customer deception thing that bothers me, but is that clearly illegal by US law?
I've heard talk that once the RIAA starts suing the general public, that's when there will be a huge public complaint against them. So, what do my fellow Slashdotter's think, will this be another nail in the coffin of the music industry as we know it. Or will they succeed in scaring(sp?) people out of trading files?
Who says these two possibilites are mutually exclusive? I can easily see both happening simultaneously. If lots of P2Pers start getting sued, it's only going to frustrate and anger them. It will in no way improve anybody's image of the record industry (except maybe their stock holders). However, I'm not sure this will result in the buying more CDs or legal electronic copies. Just taking into account the downturn in the economy, it seems doubtful record industry sales are going to return to their peak level any time soon, regardless of the number of people using P2P. This whole stunt could easily backfire on the RIAA if they suceed in pissing people off enough.
Granted, a lot of this is probably quite short term. If they can effectively shutdown P2P, pissed off former users may bitterly not buy more CDs. However, what about the next generation of music consumers? They would never have known P2P or free music. For them buying overpriced media would be perfectly normal, just like before P2P came along.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Using the nVidia drm kernel module and XFree driver instantly crashes my computer.
2) My BT848 TV card doesn't actually work right.
Something that Gentoo has over FreeBSD (and not just with regard to my system) are use flags. With FreeBSD ports, adding support for certain libraries often requires passing flags to make, which you typically don't know until you trying to build a package and it spits some message out about them. In Gentoo, you can select the flags you want and everything automatically uses them. I have to admit that getting all my programs support for all the libraries I want is something I really enjoy about Gentoo.
But overall, I do like FreeBSD and would probably run it more if I could use XFree with OpenGL acceleration and watch TV. I do run it on my laptop, because all of the hardware there does work with it. Notable is also that the documentation is outstanding compared to most anything on Linux.
The bottom line (for me at least) is that Linux tends to be more bleeding edge and has broader hardware support, probably due to a larger user and developer community.
This is not completely true. Some schools DO give (at least most) MS students funding. I know it was that way at Berkeley at least, although I've heard it's really the exception in this case.
I've heard similar sorts of advice before and I've always wondered, what are you supposed to say you did for those years on the resume (especially if there's nothing between when you finished and now)?
Ya, it's mostly about graphics, but technically they bill it as "The World's Largest Marketplace of Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques" (quoted from the conference webpage). So, I'm guessing this fits under "interactive techniques".
I also found this brief overview on the conference website for those that are interested.
I'm curious though... What kind of donor pressure is the RIAA going to make? I would wager that not a whole lot of money comes from RIAA members (or even the large media companies that tend to own them) for scholarships/research/etc. As for other unrelated corporations, what interest would they have to withhold such money? Alumni donors would most likely support their alma mater over a bullying RIAA I would guess too.
First, 1% is not really an accurate figure. It's actually a lot more than that... US+WEurope+Japan+Australia+NZ+Canada is around 700 million people (I estimate off the top of my head). Divided by 6 billion in the world is a bit more than 10% in the most developed nations.
Second of all, the transfer of wealth isn't so much a national one as that the rich in India (and really the rich in the industrialized world) are getting richer, while everybody else stays the same or gets poorer. India has something like 1 billion people. Only a small fraction of them (on the order of a couple million people max) are involved in the IT field. There is definitely a rich upper class (not programmers) and a middle class (this is more where the programmer types fit in). The rest of India is really quite poor.
I wouldn't say these are so comparable. I know several guys who have a BTech (the big degree granted there for this sort of stuff) from an IIT (and other schools too). The way they told me it works is that everybody basically takes a big admissions test at some point. The results of this test grant you a place to study a certain subject at a certain IIT campus. The computer-oriented fields are the most competetive, especially at the most prestigious IIT campuses. For example, you might get the option to study CS in Guwahati or mechanical engineering in Bombay or maybe just the option to study one subject at one campus (if you don't do so well). But basically it's all about this test (maybe your grades partially too, I dunno exactly). Additionally, in India there is a lot of prestige attached to the computer field, because the salaries are quite good by Indian standards. This adds to the competetiveness in the IT field.
In a place like Harvard, good grades and test scores are not enough. They're not just looking for the best test takers. They have a more subjective ("holistic") process.
If we go by the logic that clothing made in overseas sweat shops is cheap and crappy how will software produced over there be.
Yes, but there's a huge market for cheap, crappy clothing that just is good enough for many people. At the same time, there are still Italian companies doing well making high-end clothing.
A similar stratification seems to be happening with IT here. Relatively straight forward (code this database that connects to this app) sort of stuff is mostly what is being sent to India. At least for now, innovative sorts of things are not going to India en masse: small novel startups and much of the R&D contracts (including defense) for example.
It's probably about the same cost to build a car in these countries as the US, but it costs a lot to actually ship automobiles by sea. American cars sold in Europe are generally made in Europe as well.
To ship your software product just takes a file transfer or at the most a CD via FedEx.
Americans have nothing on the Germans with regard to frankness! Not really sure about the Dutch though. You all more just have a collective odd sense of humor I think (:
I still remember when my Germans friends bluntly telling me immediately, how my haircut was screwed up. That would really never happen in the US. People would just lie to you and say it looks fine. The truth is a bit refreshing though. You can definitely feel the hierarchy everywhere in Germany. It's kinda freaky really.
The weirdest part about Indian culture IMHO though is that the head movements for affirmative and negative are sorta opposite. It's hard to describe just with text, but yes is a sort of diagonal head shake. I guess that's one of those things you don't really have to deal with in outsourcing though.
Ya, they don't change that often, but the problem is that some (even in the US) don't change (like Arizona or places nearer to the equator) ever. Others change at different times of the year (daylight savings time begins in most Western European countries a week before it does in North America) or in different directions (ie, southern hemisphere summer is northern hemisphere winter). These things would just make it a pain.
It seems like you could run some cron job every half-hour (for those funky 1/2 zones in central Asia), which computes the actual time using 'date' (which seems to be able to deal with all these weird special cases for each timezone).
The particularly odd part about this is that during the Enlightenment in German speaking areas, there was a huge push to purge Latin technical terms from the vocabulary. At that time apparently, Dutch had Germanic many technical words of Germanic origin and a lot of the words were simply brought into German (presumably by making simple translations of the word parts).
At the same time though my impression is that the Dutch in general don't really care that their language is englishifying or that English is becoming more common place in every day life. For example, in Germany (and I'm told France as well), if you speak to somebody in German (even if it's fairly bad), they will respond to you in German. Typically, they will not switch to English, unless you start talking in English (and even then, the chance they speak English is really not 100%). However, in the Netherlands, people immediately pick up on the accent and will all but refuse to speak to you in Dutch if they speak English (which many people, especially in bigger cities, do quite well). Ironically though, I never have really had this problem in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of Belgium for readers who may not know). There I think they've fought so long against the political dominance of French that they really value their language. Wouldn't that be ironic, if someday Dutch was only spoken Flanders!
Did you know the german word for "Admin"? It's "Netzwerkadministrator" ...a word with fsckin' 21 chars :-/
Speaking as an American living in Germany, sometimes it amazes me how arbitrary the decision of using borrowed or translated computer terminology is. My favorite as of late is "worst-case Laufzeit" (worst case runtime). Worst-case is something which can be applied to many other fields, but run time is generally confined (at least as far as I know) to the time it takes for a computer to do something. Yet, they translate the individual parts of the English compound to form a new German compound, while leaving the more broadly used word in the original English.
Anyhow, the next time I was in town, I wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows. However, I also installed Mozilla and told them to just use that in the future and said it's really just a different kind of Netscape.
Well, I was home again over Christmas and they were ranting and raving about how great Mozilla is. Apparently, they had had conversations with neighbors and friends about this "Mozilla thing" and how it crashes less, blocks pop-ups easily, etc. Of course, none of these people had heard of it, but their interest was immediately sparked. Maybe they're Mozilla users now even...
The point is that Mozilla is a piece of free software that even my not-so-tech-savy parents can evagelize about, because it's a good product for a wide range of people.
The organizers report an enormous increase in attendance at this year's
LinuxTag. Two hours before the end of the convention they drew a
preliminary conclusion for LinuxTag 2003: over 19,500 visitors were counted,
more than 40% more than last year.
The many international guests, for example John 'Maddog' Hall from the USA
and Utaka Niibe of the Free Software Initiative Japan, ensured full
presentation rooms. Also content-wise the presentations were predominantely
high class.
The exhibitors expressed themselves throughout positively surprised
and satisfied. There were "extremely many business contacts" registered.
Many exhibitors saw their expectations fullfilled. Whoever had seen
LinuxTag still as a community event with relatively few business customers,
saw themselves better informed.
Oliver Zendel, the head of LinuxTag e.V., sees LinuxTag as a large success
that proves that Linux and free software can also suceed in the field of professional
business. LinuxTag is the largest Linux convention in Europe and
according to his words, a "world-wide leading convention for free software."
Highly visible was the effect, that arose from the decision by the city of
Munich to use Linux. According to information from Pro-Linux the number
of accredited journalists doubled from that of last year.
Ya, they're not just an RIAA member, but actually partially owned by a subsidiary of BMG (Bertelsmann, one of the major labels).
My impression on at least one of the reasons why they do this, is that there is certain proprietary code licensed from other companies in these drivers, which they simply do not have permission to release with an open license. I suppose the primary manufacturer (ie, nvidia, ati, or 3d labs) could work to get the people who do own the proprietary licenses on that code to open it. However, this seems like a lot of work from a video card chip manufacturer's perspective, for (debateably) little gain. I've also heard grumblings (maybe just rumors though) that companies are afraid to release their drivers open source, because then competitors can see how their architecture is set up.
So long as the data from the electronic machines is still available for a recount and no easier to tamper with than paper, I fail to see how this is really any more of a problem.
Educating people is really the only reasonable solution, but even that isn't so easy. Just take megahertz for example. Well, yes, it's defined to be the number of ticks that clock in the computer makes per second. However, you now have to explain what all this business about a clock is, which will certainly lead to other questions. For most people, this is really just too much. Of course, even if people know the definition of a MHz, they'll still likely to think of it as "how fast your computer runs" in practical terms, which is still problematic.
I'm not sure how this monopoly situation is really good for the market in general. If there wasn't all of this gov't monopoly pressure, maybe the money being invested in lower-quality VoIP would be invested in building a half-way decent phone system. The way things are now, only people with access to high speed internet (via radio or satelite or whatever) seem to be benefiting. If Ghana's or Togo's phone system was on par with western standards, more people would have access to decent phone service.
To use a bad analogy, it's like the pass is blocked off by the government, so now people are climbing over or digging tunnels through the mountains instead, since they're not allowed through the pass. If the gov't would just let people through the pass, things would be more efficient. Mountain climbing and tunnel digging might be very useful, but if you're just trying to get to the other side, it's a lot of extra work.
The reason VoIP hasn't really caught on in the industrialized world is because telephone networks do a better job (at least for now) of providing voice service with regard to sound quality, features, and reliability. In Africa, this seems to be the only way to get any sort of basic service at all, so people are willing to go with it.
From what they talk about in the article, it already seems there's a call center there, which is being used to sell services in the northeastern US. Despite the claims of the article though, places like Ghana (which is really one of the better off places in Africa) still lack the resources that places like India have. Programming jobs are outsourced to India because 1) there is an education system there that produces a work force capable of doing that kind of work and 2) companies aren't afraid to invest or do business there due to political instability. Both of these are really important to get foreign investment. Take Pakistan for example. Problems with 2) have really limited opportunities there, even though it does have some of 1).
I know no west african nation has this sort of infrastructure in place at this time. However, in the future, I suppose it could happen in places with stable governments and the necessary investments.
Ya, but where do you think those theories came from? They didn't just drop out of the sky; they were innovated. On the other side of the coin, do you think theory played no role in this innovation contest? Sure, theory isn't everything, but it's also a necessary part of innovation.
Uh, there's no such thing (at least as far as I know) as the "University of Berkley", only the University of California at Berkeley ... you insensitive clod!
It's the whole customer deception thing that bothers me, but is that clearly illegal by US law?
Who says these two possibilites are mutually exclusive? I can easily see both happening simultaneously. If lots of P2Pers start getting sued, it's only going to frustrate and anger them. It will in no way improve anybody's image of the record industry (except maybe their stock holders). However, I'm not sure this will result in the buying more CDs or legal electronic copies. Just taking into account the downturn in the economy, it seems doubtful record industry sales are going to return to their peak level any time soon, regardless of the number of people using P2P. This whole stunt could easily backfire on the RIAA if they suceed in pissing people off enough.
Granted, a lot of this is probably quite short term. If they can effectively shutdown P2P, pissed off former users may bitterly not buy more CDs. However, what about the next generation of music consumers? They would never have known P2P or free music. For them buying overpriced media would be perfectly normal, just like before P2P came along.